You would have thought that working long hours would leave people with little time left for an after work drink, but according to this meta-analysis by Virtanen and colleagues, people who have long working hours are at higher risk of alcohol use. Editorialist Cassandra A Okechukwu says that the findings of this study add impetus to further […]
Category: The BMJ today
The BMJ Today: Polling day
Tuesday is the day we change our weekly UK poll, which enables us to promote the new topic in the weekly print issue (Tuesday is also press day). Our current one asks if doctors should encourage patients to record consultations, linked to a head to head article published last week. At the time of writing, […]
The BMJ Today: My mum and Richard Smith
Yesterday my mum, who died of cancer in February 2007, would have been 91. I’m not an expert on death and so do not know whether hers was “good” or not, but I’ll never forget the last six months of her life, when we knew she was dying and had to make the most of […]
The BMJ Today: From patients to politicians—something for everyone
Surely most patients see doctors for the sole reason of getting healthier. Can recording a consultation help? Does it harm? Even if the law permits patients to record their medical encounters, should they do it? Should doctors encourage it? One thing seems certain: recording changes the behaviour of doctors as well as patients. Glyn Elwyn […]
The BMJ Today: Getting to grips with research and research papers
The BMJ Today blogs this week are all written by research editors, who handle original research manuscripts from submission up to eventual acceptance (even though that only applies to a very small percentage of submitted papers). Many of our authors are practising doctors, as well as highly experienced researchers in top medical research centres who […]
The BMJ Today: Evacuation of children in World War II
The evacuation of civilians has been performed in many countries in times of war. The evacuation of civilians in Britain immediately after the outbreak of the Second World War was designed to save children from the risks associated with aerial bombing of cities by moving them to areas thought to be less at risk. Operation Pied […]
The BMJ Today: Small changes can make a big difference
As everyone settles into the new year and tries to keep to their resolutions, the reflective nature of the period is hard to ignore. If you’re revisiting the previous year’s high and low points, it can be difficult not to feel overwhelmingly negative about global health; Ebola continues to increase, obesity is rising, and health […]
The BMJ Today: Meta-analyses and meta-meta-analyses
Meta-analyses can be dull reads, but, when done properly, they are the best summaries of available evidence for doctors to base their decisions on. Today we see two new meta-analyses on diabetes and cancer, a new reporting statement for meta-analyses, and finally, if you have read all these, you can test yourself in the Endgames […]
The BMJ Today: Baby doctors refuse to be babied
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on home births attracted a flurry of media attention when it was first published at the end of last year, with headlines boldly announcing the safety of home births. In a letter in The BMJ, a group of fetal medicine doctors take another look at […]
The BMJ Today: Second UK Ebola patient identified, and how 3D printing could affect clinical practice
The BMJ has been tracking the developments of the Ebola virus outbreak throughout 2014, and it continues to be in the news as the year draws to a close. Today, Anne Gulland’s story updates us on the UK nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and has been admitted to the high level isolation unit […]